It is freaking lawn sign season. Get on it!

Michael Chertoff opines today about how blinding our inteligence community is making it tough to stop the next attack.

Imagine that our troops in Afghanistan raided an al-Qaeda safe house and captured a computer containing the cellphone numbers of operatives in Europe. Wouldn’t it be important to know whether one of those cellphone numbers was used to book a transatlantic flight? Unfortunately, today our ability to make that connection remains limited: Information that terrorists readily share with travel agents cannot easily be shared throughout the United States government. That needs to change.

Information sharing and intelligence gathering are some of our most important tools in the global war on terrorism. British authorities, in partnership with the United States and our allies, were able to disrupt the recent terrorist plot against passenger aircraft precisely because of timely, actionable intelligence, properly shared and acted upon before the terrorists could carry out their plans.

But despite the strong links we’ve forged with our European partners to protect our nations, we still remain handcuffed in our ability to use all available resources to identify threats and stop terrorists.

Go read the rest, and ask yourself if we can stop people if we’re not allowed to even track their movements and communications.

Sen. Ted Kennedy is a big fat liar. He writes over at the Huffington Post about his interpretation of the Bush administration’s post Katrina response.

One year later, hundreds of thousands of families from New Orleans and the Gulf are still without jobs and unable to return to their homes.

One year later, the administration has used less than half of the $110 billion in federal aid approved by Congress to help people rebuild their lives.

One year later, families in New Orleans are still waiting for trailers to live in and for demolition and clean up crews to clear their neighborhoods so they can rebuild their homes.

One year later, half of the city’s hospitals remain closed and less than half of the New Orleans public schools plan to reopen this fall.

Well what ever happened to Mayor Nagin? Is he sitting in the corner with his head under the desk again? Governor Blanco? Are there crocodile tears screwing up her mascara again? Has anyone seen her lately? What about the $77 billion dollars that Bush has allocated to the region, of which only $33 billion has been spent?

So once again, the Democrats are covering for the dismal local governmental performance of their fellow Democrats. You wanna know why Katrina was so bad? A big frickin hurricane hit an area that had been trusting the Democrats in charge of keeping them safe. Those Democrats squandered and pillaged the money given to them in order to protect the citizens of New Orleans.

And when the you know what did hit the fan, those same Democrats were the first people to cut and run. When the going got tough, the Democrats did nothing and blamed Bush.

So here is a question. If the Democrats take Congress in 06 and the White House in 08, who will they blame when things go wrong?

So says Rumsfeld. (And every one with a brain and patriotic pulse.)

(AP) FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, Nev. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in “manipulating the media” to influence Westerners.

“That’s the thing that keeps me up at night,” he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other Navy personnel at this flight training base for Navy and Marine pilots.

Rumsfeld was asked whether the criticism he draws as Pentagon chief and a leading advocate of the war in Iraq is an impediment to performing his job. He said it was not and he knows from history that wars are normally unpopular with many Americans. “I expect that,” he said. “I understand that.”

“What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is,” he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.

“They are actively manipulating the media in this country” by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

The media’s response, what is he talking about? We’re fake but accurate.

This is interesting.

Is Campaigning for Sheriff Fletcher being done with public property (and on the public’s time?) Why is the Ramsey County Attorney not prosecuting this case?

Go check out the whole thing.

One of the things I talked about on the Northern Alliance Radio Show was how we need good people in the Minnesota House. Barry Hickethier is one of those people.

Please donate online to Barry here.

Big Foot - Little Foot
 

Notice the exclamation point, rather than question mark?

That is really quite scary. No, not the beer, the fact that there are now 2 Foot’s running around.

Sleep well everyone.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran test fired a new submarine-to-surface missile during war games in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, a show of military might amid a standoff with the West over its nuclear activities.

Is anyone surprised? Well I’m sure the Bush bashers will try to blame Bush for this, but after all, he was being multilateral for you.

Iran is a danger. If the UN can’t do something about the threat, the is no point to the UN any longer. Let’s eminent domain their palace of corruption in New York and boot their asses to France where that kinda appeasement and capitulation really belongs.

This one is for the fathers out there who want to find a creative way to avoid watching the kids, ever again.

The Boy and I had a marvelous time tonight. We enjoyed a steak dinner, and then retired to the deck for drinks and conversation:

I would seriously stop over and read the rest, leave a comment, and tell Learned Foot it was nice knowing him, because his wife is going to kill him when she gets home. Hint, hint, there are pictures.

Barry Casselman has a great piece in the Washington Times.

AN AMERICAN EAGLE IN AUTUMN

It is the final political season for President George W. Bush.
After November, he will begin the process leading to the day in
January, 2009 when he will become irreversibly a former president
of the United States.

But his season as president is not yet over. He has two and
one-half years to preside over the American government,
regardless of the results this November.

President Bush faces momentous difficulties. Many Americans
still do not realize the extent to which the United States is locked
into a protracted and dangerous war with islamo-fascism.

After we were attacked on September 11, 2001, U.S. public
opinion overwhelmingly favored the pursuit of our attackers in
their base in Afghanistan. President Bush and his advisors realized,
however, that this would not solve the new long-term threat now
posed by an enemy determined not only to remove our presence
from the Middle East and destroy the state of Israel, but also to
humiliate and overwhelm Western culture with an aggressive and
feudal totalitarian culture of their own.

A war was initiated in Iraq to remove a bestial dictator and to
change this totalitarian nature of the Middle East. Virtually
everyone concedes Saddam Hussein’s cruelty, but many in the
U.S. and most in Europe resisted the boldness and risk the
president took to alter the chemistry of persistent feudalism in
the Middle Eastern Islamic world.

Unfortunately, President Bush at the outset muddled his true
purpose with dire warnings of so-called “weapons of mass
destruction” which were not found after the war. What we did
find was absolute evidence of a regime so venal and cruel that it
is difficult to understand how it was able to persist for so many
decades. Opponents rightly contend that even destroying this
unspeakable regime was not alone worth the risk we took, the
lives we have lost, and the huge expense we have made. But the
president and his advisors had a much larger strategic purpose.
They saw the necessity, given the ominous aggression of the
terrorists, to change the nature of the Middle Eastern political
landscape which had been altered primarily by a vast and
seemingly unending infusion of cash from the sale of its
petroleum resources to the rest of the world. This infusion
permitted Middle Easter regimes to arm themselves with
sophisticated weaponry and to pursue the acquisition of
nuclear weapons. It is instructive to point out to  Western
apologists for these regimes that they did not use their new
economic resources to provide civiliam infrastructure,
universal education and health care to their populations,
including the long-suffering Palestinian refugees in their midst.

His opponents continue to demonize President Bush. But I
continue to think his strategic vision is the best one, and the
risk he took was a valid one. The struggle is not over in the
Middle East, contrary to the perennial naysayers, but it is a
time when outcomes are uncertain and our purpose is not
transparent. The president and his advisors, principally
Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, tried to follow-up their
successful military campaign with minimal military force.
I think this was mainly due to their lack of personal military
experience. Colin Powell’s doctrine of “overwhelming force”
in hindsight (and in the foresight of military history) was
much more likely to succeed.

But given the chance to reverse our policy through the
presidential election on 2004, American voters chose,
intuitively, to continue the president’s course. As I have
written many times in recent months, wars are not easily and
neatly fought. From Manassas to the Battle of the Bulge to
Viet Nam, there are battles lost and grievous mistakes made.
It has been this way as long as we have records of history.

Only 16 years after we unilaterally withdrew from Viet Nam,
world communism collapsed. It did not collapse from war on
a battlefield, but it did collapse from the determination of
Western democratic capitalism to contain it until it fell apart
from its own economic contradictions. In the case of the
Middle East, the continued infusion of billions of dollars into
the economies of hostile regimes from the sale of petroleum,
and the aggression of the terrorists offers no such simple
prospect. I have suggested that George W. Bush came to the
right vision and the right strategy after September 11. In this
he has served, and continues to serve, the greatest interests of
the United States and its values of democracy and economic
freedom. This gift, however, has not been matched with equal
gifts of communication to the American people. In an
environment of uncertainly, terrible images of war and
destruction, and a lack of understanding of our foreign
policy purposes, it is not surprising that most Americans are
unhappy, anxious and unwilling to be optimistic about our
military confrontations which seem to have no end.

During the campaign of 2006, Mr. Bush has been touring the
country in support of his party’s candidates for Congress. As
a sitting, albeit unpopular, president, he raises large sums for
their campaigns. But his remarks on these occasions, often
given to private and sympathetic audiences,.has been a
restatement of his resolve to carry on the global struggle
against the contemporary threat of terrorism. He and his
advisors are showing new flexibility in their determination to
defeat this enemy even as some leaders of the opposition
party are clamoring for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The
American voters are deepy troubled and weary of war, but I
don’t think they have any intention to appease the enemy
and surrender the field. (Some Democrats, including Senator
Joe Biden, are searching for new ways to hold the field, reject
appeasement, yet realize American goals and ideals. But for
now, they are being shouted down.)

This is why November may not be so dark for the president
and his party after all. Mr. Bush has been telling personal
stories to his audiences during the campaign of 2006, trying
to enable them belatedly to understand what he is doing.
Reverting to his native Texglish, and eschewing the more
formal contemporary English of so many of his colleagues,
Mr. Bush talks of his recent experiences as president. One
of the most touching is when he talks about the books he
has been reading about his predecessors, particularly the
best of them, Washington, Lincoln and Franklin
Roosevelt. All of them were war president, too. His
identity with Lincoln is the most revealing. Lincoln
struggled with an unpopular war, was demonized in the
press, and he made many mistakes in his choice of generals
and battles. Lincoln’s original stated purpose to preserve
the Union evolved into the abolition of slavery, and when
he was on the verge of winning, he put it all into what
author Ron White and others call, his greatest speech, the
second inaugural. Mr. Bush has read Mr. White’s
remarkable book (”Lincoln’s Greatest Speech”) as I
recently have, and he communicates his own anguish,
realizing he has no less responsibility and purpose as our
greatest president, but knowing he lacks Lincoln’s
extraaordinary gift of speech. Unlike Lincoln, who wrote
his own speeches, Mr. Bush has delivered his best ones
with the aid of a superb speechwriter.  Even so, he has
so far failed to explain fully to the American people his
grand strategy and purpose.

But he is an eagle in the autumn of his presidency,
stubbornly holding to his vision and overwhelming
responsibility, determined to finish his watch holding
to his deepest values and ideals. Eventually, those who
oppose him, and even those who may despise him now,
are likely to recognize and honor his lonely and historic
journey.